Charter school parents blast district

Exclusionary policy at Sweetwater decried

Chula Vista  Parents of charter school students in South Bay demanded Wednesday that the Sweetwater Union High School District rescind what they say is an unlawful new policy that limits the number of Sweetwater students who are guaranteed admission to San Diego State University.

In October, the district announced that students who attend seventh and eighth grade at charter schools outside Sweetwater would be excluded from its entrance agreement with San Diego State University, known as the Compact for Success.

This month, the district launched an aggressive campaign that includes handing out leaflets in school parking lots intended to draw students from nondistrict charter schools and into its middle schools. Attendance greatly affects the amount of state funding that school districts receive. The Sweetwater district lost $3.18 million in state attendance funding this year.

A letter drafted for the parents by lawyer Gregory Moser and Ricardo Soto, senior vice president for legal advocacy and general counsel for the California Charter Schools Association, requests that the district stop disqualifying charter students from the SDSU agreement; that it stop refusing to give credit for high school algebra, history or Spanish courses taken in charter middle schools; and that it stop distributing what they say is false information about charter schools, including the qualifications of their teachers, the rigor of their programs, the safety of their campuses and the eligibility of charter students for financial aid.

District spokeswoman Lillian Leopold said the Sweetwater offices are closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“We’ll look at it on Monday and respond accordingly,” she said.

The letter also asks the district to stop “illegally promising gifts (netbooks) to students as an inducement to enrollment” and to stop excluding sports teams of charter middle school students from competition with Sweetwater district schools. The letter urged the district to suspend a Dec. 16 deadline for charter school students to register at Sweetwater schools and thus be eligible for the compact; the suspension would allow time for the district to investigate the issue further, the parents said.

“Everything we’ve heard raises some serious concerns about the legality of the district’s decision and of the tactics that they’re engaging in,” Soto said.

Lillian Toulet, a parent of two Chula Vista Learning Community Charter students, said more than 100 parents are upset with Sweetwater’s decision.

“The board does not fully realize how deeply this decision is hurting our kids and family,” she said. “We have a lot of kids who are really sad and disturbed because they’re being confronted with the possibility of having to change from one school into another school and leaving their friends and teachers behind. It’s been hard to try to explain it to the kids since the parents don’t understand it either.”

She said a parent meeting has been scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Chula Vista Learning Community Center, 590 K St. Toulet and Soto said they also plan to speak during public comments at a Sweetwater board meeting scheduled for that night at 6 p.m.